Communication as Resistance in Food Politics

Alana Mann

Abstract

The global food system is a site of domination and resistance for those opposed to the conventional model of industrial agriculture. This article applies a political economy of communication lens to the relations of power that operate in the field of food politics where tensions involving food security, peak oil, and anthropogenic climate change present major challenges. At the heart of this trilemma social movements of small-scale farmers contest the dominant narratives that biotechnology, development, and free trade will feed the world. This article describes how farmers’ movements in Brazil, Chile, and Cuba apply resistive epistemologies in to complement for agroecological production methods. The purpose is to develop political consciousness among rural food producers and workers who are subjugated under neo-liberalism. The article also presents the challenges that members of the international farmers’ movement, La Vìa Campesina, face in advancing their political influence through participation in invited spaces such as the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s World Committee for Food Security.